


The Other Asgard

by Numendil



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Allspeak (Marvel), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Crack, Gen, Humor, Linguistic Fuckery, Norse-inspired universes collide, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 11:16:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16217906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numendil/pseuds/Numendil
Summary: After Ragnarök, Thor washes up on a beach.





	The Other Asgard

**Author's Note:**

> Marvel's Thor mythology includes a mechanism called the 'Allspeak' that allows Asgardians to be understand and be understood by speakers of any language. In this story, it gets a little overzealous with some Quenya proper nouns...

The first thing he saw was the stars.

They were uncountably many, impossibly bright, so close it seemed he could reach out and touch them. They were not Asgard’s stars—somehow, though they were anything but earthly, he could make out a few Midgardian constellations. He breathed a sigh of relief. There were certainly worse places to wake up.

He perceived that he was soaking wet and laying on sand. A beach, then; he’d washed up on a beach. He turned his head and confirmed it: he lay on a palm-lined beach beside an oddly calm sea. He reached out and ran his fingers through the sand. It glimmered in the starlight in a way normal sand did not—he found, on closer inspection, that the sand was made of _diamonds_.

Probably not Midgard, then.

And how had he washed up on a beach anyway? He had been in space—

_Ragnarök. Thanos._

_Loki._

He sprang to his feet and took a quick look at his surroundings. Somewhere inland he could see city lights upon a high hill. To his left, equally far away, were more lights, and a few bright pinpricks coming and going.

 _Not wholly uncivilised, then. Possibly spacefaring._ Hopefully spacefaring: he would need to get out of here as soon as possible.

But both cities were too far away to walk, so he turned to his right, where there was a cottage on a hill overlooking the beach. A homely light shone from its window. He walked up the hill and knocked on the cottage’s door, which was answered by a silver-haired—

_Light Elf?_

She was definitely a _ljosalf_ : her strange, ethereal beauty, lithe and graceful figure, and pointed ears marked her as one of that race, though she was far from home if she was. Well, maybe. He had yet to figure out where he actually was.

‘Greetings, Elf,’ he said. ‘I seem to have washed up on your beach. Would you mind telling me where I am?’

‘You’d better come in,’ said the Elf. ‘I’m afraid this is going to be a long story.’ He followed her into the cottage.

‘Rare is the mortal who recognises us for what we are these days,’ she continued, once they had settled, ‘but then again, rare is the mortal who dresses like you.’ He looked down at his armour self-consciously. ‘Are you one of those…I think they’re called “cosplayers”? I heard someone made a movie out of some of the old stories, and it’s apparently quite popular. Well, I can assure you that none of us ever wore anything like _that_. You’ve gotten very lucky, at any rate: the last mortal to show up in Alfheim was at least a thousand years ago.’

‘This isn’t Alfheim,’ said Thor, ‘and I’m not mortal. Well, technically I am, but if by “mortal” you mean “human”—we use the word that way too, sometimes—I’m not. And I’m not _that_ mortal—I’m fifteen hundred years old.’

‘And I’m fifteen thousand,’ said the Elf. ‘If you aren’t a Man, then who or what are you?’

‘I am Thor Odinson, King of Asgard,’ he answered. The Elf burst into hysterical laughter.

Her laughter was interrupted by a dark-haired male Elf in a nightshirt coming down the stairs. ‘What’s going on here, love?’ he asked. ‘Is that a Man?’

‘Well…’ began the she-Elf. Then, with a start, she turned back to Thor. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve forgotten to introduce myself. I’m Celebrían, and this is my husband Elrond.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Thor. ‘Now, as you were saying…’

Celebrían turned back to her husband. ‘It appears we’ve got a wash-up, honey,’ she told him, ‘but something must have addled his mind. He recognised us as Elves immediately and apparently speaks our language—not utterly surprising, considering how popular Tolkien’s translations have become—but he also claims he’s fifteen hundred years old, and—get this—that he’s the King of Asgard!’ She fought back another bout of laughter.

Elrond looked at Thor. ‘I’m afraid there’s only one King of Asgard,’ he said, ‘and unless he’s taken a swan dive off the Mountain and landed in the bay, you’re not him.’

‘Odin is dead,’ said Thor. ‘Have you not heard? Ragnarök has come. Asgard is destroyed. And now the survivors are under attack. I need your help!’

‘I don’t know who “Odin” or “Ragnarök” are, but I assure you that Asgard endures,’ said Elrond. ‘It lies just beyond the mountains. I was just in Tirion two days ago.’

‘Asgard was not separated from Alfheim by _mountains_ , nor did it ever contain any city called “Tirion”,’ said Thor, incredulous that the Light Elves—first and greatest of the races to fall under Asgard’s protection—could be so utterly ignorant about the shape and state of the Nine Realms. ‘What are you going on about?’

‘I would ask the same of you,’ said Elrond. ‘How, for one, do you even speak our tongue so well?’

‘Wait,’ said Thor, realising. ‘The tongue I speak is enchanted, so that all who hear it hear their own language in their hearts. It may be that it is malfunctioning, and your Asgard and mine are not the same. Say the name again, and I will try to lift the enchantment briefly.’

‘The name of the realm beyond the Mountains of Defence,’ said Elrond, ‘is _Valinor_.’

‘Valinor,’ repeated Thor. ‘And what does that name mean?’

‘It’s _Vala-nórë_ , I suppose,’ said Elrond—‘that is, the country of the gods.’

‘So, Asgard.’ The translation was exact.

‘Would you claim yourself to be a god?’ asked Elrond.

‘Yes,’ said Thor. ‘Well, no, not technically. But I was once worshipped on Midgard. Now I’m just a celebrity superhero, and apparently Midgard’s most eligible bachelor for the sixth year running despite being neither from Midgard nor precisely “eligible” to date anyone from Midgard. I tried once. It was a bad idea.’

The Elves struggled to parse his answer. ‘Men worship all sorts of things,’ said Elrond at last, ‘but here dwell the true Gods, the Valar, appointed regents of the One Above All. It is by their blessing alone that you have entered this realm.’

‘Good,’ said Thor. ‘I’m gonna need their help. Rather, the _Universe_ is gonna need their help. There’s a giant purple dude with a nutsack for a chin who really needs his ass kicked right about now.’

**Author's Note:**

> The LOTR movies definitely exist in the MCU, as evidenced by the time Tony Stark calls Hawkeye 'Legolas' in the original Avengers movie.
> 
> Oh, and I nearly forgot: check out the symbol on Malekith's breastplate:


End file.
